Franziska Schroeder and io 0.0.1 beta++ (Ó Riada Hall, Cork, May 25, 2010)
At the io 0.0.1 beta++ ’site, I’m posting short excerpts from the liner notes to ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531). Written by the California-based interactive media artist Sara Roberts, here’s the second excerpt:
io 0.0.1 beta++ is rather special in being both an instrument and a player. And given the two attributes it has a very particular sound, ‘sound’ here referring to both timbral quality and the broader sense of having an indelible identity, a style, having its own sound. [2]
io has an extravagant range of sounds made with superhuman amounts of air, and superhuman articulations of air resistance: a hummingbird trill that can go on without the limit of breath, bleats, blats, a grainy slur, shifts between piping and sandy sounds, elephant-like trumpeting, a faint spitty-sounding purr, slushy trills, a hoarse blast of full-spectrum noise, scumbling, whispery hisses ramping up to loud razzing. It can make delicate birdlike chirpings then abruptly sound like a power tool under duress, or render sounds reminiscent of emergency vehicles. [Original post at io 0.0.1 beta++…]
[2] George E. Lewis, ‘Interacting with Latter-Day Musical Automata’, Contemporary Music Review, Vol.18, No.3, 99–112 (1999).
I’ve shut the CD store because of the move back to the United States. I plan to reinstate the purchase option, but I can’t say when at the moment. Some of these CDs are available from other sources, and these are indicated below.
Charles Hayward (drums, percussion and melodica), Han-earl Park (guitar), Ian Smith (trumpet and flugelhorn), Lol Coxhill (saxophone) tracks 6 and 7. Mathilde 253 is the real-time musical meeting between legendary avant-rock drummer Charles Hayward (This Heat, Massacre), “careful and crafty” guitarist Han-earl Park (Paul Dunmall, Kato Hideki), and mainstay of the London improvised music scene Ian Smith (Derek Bailey, London Improvisers’ Orchestra). Mathilde 253 was born out of an opportunity to explore the spontaneous mashup of avant-rock, African-American creative musics, European free improvisation and noise. Joined by the veteran iconoclastic saxophonist Lol Coxhill, this recording documents the weaving of physical virtuosity and humorous sound poetics, a patchwork of restraint, subtlety and recklessness.